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LOUISVILLE INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT PREPARES FOR INFLUX OF PRIVATE JETS

2 May 2019

As the Kentucky Derby approaches, the relatively small airport of Louisville International, around three miles away from the race track, sees its busiest week of the year.

The airport only handles domestic passenger flights but, due to its convenient location within the US, it is the third busiest cargo airport in the country. According to WingX figures the airport sees a small number of private flights on a daily basis – averaging less than 20 departures a day. But the week of the derby, the airport handles 10% of its annual private jet traffic, with as many as 500 aircraft movements on the busiest day.

Richard Thompson, President of Air Charter Service Americas, said: “We always see exceptionally high demand for private jets at the beginning of May to the race, which is the highest attended horse race in the US. The 10 furlong (1¼ mile) race is dubbed "The Most Exciting Two Minutes In Sports" and is worth a cool $1.86m to the winner.

“We analysed the WingX figures over the course of the week Monday 30th April to Sunday 6th May 2018. There were a total of just over 1,500 private jet movements, making up 10% of the total annual figure for the airport. Most of the flights were short hops of less than an hour and a half, with the two most popular routes being out of and back into the New York airports of Teterboro and Westchester County.”

~ENDS~

About Air Charter Service

Air Charter Service is a global air charter broker company with 25 worldwide offices, spanning all six major continents and we offer private jet, commercial airliner and cargo aircraft charters, as well as onboard courier solutions. We arrange almost 15,000 contracts annually with revenue of close to 700 million dollars. We were formed in 1990 by Chairman Chris Leach and CEO Justin Bowman in the basement of a house, and we now employ more than 500 staff worldwide.